


The Worst Part About Being Strong

by Taciyet



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: (sidenote:ThunderBird, Almost-Therapist Sam Wilson, Angst, Angst and Humor, Asgard's C- Healthcare, BirdOnAWire??, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Odin's C- Parenting, Oh My God), Oneshot, PTSD, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Sam-Centric, Team Dynamics, Thor Has Issues, Thor Is Not Stupid, Thor Needs a Hug, Thor-centric, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Wordcount: Over 1.000, oh my god is that their ship name?, thor is not an idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 02:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10710672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taciyet/pseuds/Taciyet
Summary: ~-Is That No One Ever Asks If You're Okay(Or: Sam is a borderline therapist for veterans, Thor has also seen and been through some shit, and we don't talk about either of these things enough.)





	The Worst Part About Being Strong

**Author's Note:**

> Title is one of those quotes that's made its way onto every part of the internet in every way (so who knows who originally said it).  
> But in this case, title specifically inspired by [that picset that applied it to Thor](http://taciyet.tumblr.com/post/156804222391/thorodnson-x).

 

The first time it ever really registered that the demigod wasn't impenetrable, Sam had seen it in his eyes.

He'd already been inducted as a borderline psychological maintainer for the Avengers. Not directly for that purpose of course. Not _at all_ for that purpose. Not even Steve seemed to have counted on it. Hell, he himself hadn't meant for it to be so. Sometimes he just did it, without even realizing it. Fault of it being his profession, his day-to-day living. He'd always been one to check on the well being of others in his unit. “Shrinking people,” as Stark had put it. Needless to say, the former CEO had taken to avoiding being in the same room with him alone anymore after falling victim to it.

Hell, once even the Black Widow had almost opened up to him. A slip, he realized, not a slip, when he'd met her expression, and hardened green eyes had been piercing into his. He'd met the gutting look head on. Reformed enemy spy was new, but spy, confirmed kills, hardened badass. Those were familiar types to deal with.

He could barely remember what was said, it being such a benign post-mission lunch-finishing table-question he hadn't had reason to expect to turn into a test, and the entire exchange had been _maybe_ thirty seconds. But when he'd managed to keep her gaze, something in hers had changed. It seemed he'd managed to disarm her in turn. Eyelids deshuttering as brow raised, revealing nearly the full circumference of green irises. She even subconsciously leaned back, making him realize she'd been cross-arm leaning in in the first place.

Clint had come behind as she rose and left, giving a chuckle. “Give the woman a safe house vetted by Captain America and save the world with her and it's still not enough for trust.” Sam had turned the look on him next as the other took a drink out of a crinkling bottle of water. Clint withdrew said bottle, gesturing points to the walls, ceiling, anywhere but his face with cheeks still full of water as he'd retreated from the room.

Bruce... Well, Banner was a doctor. Between that and the Hulk--”the Other Guy”, he didn't see the point of hiding his emotions.

So. Thor.

It was still odd to grasp the concept of aliens. Then you throw in outer-rim politics, hierarchies, the aliens being human-shaped but super advanced and powerful... Even watching the god of thunder, the namesake of the legend, hurl his magic hammer into the turbine of the plane they had been pursuing, mid-flight, outstretch his hand, and watching it come back to him...

He still remembered the sound of the thing streaking past his head. Definitely not a way he wanted to go out. He'd passively remarked such over the comms.

“Mjolnir would never strike you, my friend. Aim is always true.”

Thor's father had given the thing to him. His father, the king. Of Asgard. Outer space royalty. Sam still wasn't entirely clear on the whole “realm” thing, but from his understanding, that kingdom stretched at least around an entire planet. Asgard was a star they still weren't entirely sure they saw when Thor pointed it out in the sky, but that star wasn't _actually_ a star, it was a cluster of them, and Asgard wasn't really “a _planet_ as humans understood the term physically,” but it was still large, and it was amongst those stars...? He didn't know about Asgard, but Earth had a population of a few billion strong. The governing was split up here. So “Prince Thor's” kingdom, he couldn't even imagine...

But yes. The first time he'd seen any hint of Thor's mental demons, he wasn't surprised.

They'd been flying a mission, which Cap had requested Sam's air support for, suspected alien-tech enhanced jets. Most of them the Avengers destroyed or disabled before they ever left the ground. But one, the one he and Thor had chased down, had managed to go airborne and attempted to escape. Iron Man grounded still making sure nothing is rigged with any fatal fail-safes.

Mjolnir's aim might have been true.

But the things it destroyed, apparently not accounted for.

“Shit...”

Sam had rolled, twisted, pulled up as he'd hugged himself into a ball. Enwrapped himself as best he could to stop the burning shrapnel headed towards him from impacting anything that was skin.

Freefalling blind he'd untucked a moment too soon. A straggling bit of shrapnel slammed into the right Falcon wing, and...

“Of course...” With some assistance of melting heat, somehow managed to hook in just such a way as to hold it in its folded state.

He'd glanced down just before the world began to spin from just the one wing instead of both expanding for a moment. Plenty of time to fix this without needing support, and his HUD confirmed.

He'd tried to at least somewhat control his nonconsensual descent, so that his vision wouldn't swim as he tried to extricate the shrapnel. Tony had redesigned his upgraded suit to be able to better act as a jetpack of sorts in just such a situation. Problem was, leveling out. He still had a chute if all else failed...

Sam was only a few seconds in when he'd felt a strong grip around his wrist, then a sudden, jarring pull that changed his momentum to up rather than down.

Once he was done straining in pain at his shoulder internally, he'd let out a deflating “Woo...” and looked down. Seeing the flaming undercarriage of the jet that he'd felt barely miss him a few moments before.

“Is that how it feels when you catch that thing?” he'd asked Thor's vambrace. “That's _hell_ on the shoulder. Look man, maybe it doesn't feel like that to you actually, but not all of us have...”

Amicable banter faded, seeing Thor's expression. Or, glimpsing. At his own expression change, the blond's had smoothed over.

“Hey man. ...You okay?”

He get's a laugh that probably even sounds half-hearted to its giver in return, not doing much for saving face. It even takes almost a moment for him to get out that much.

“I'm alright,” says the demigod. Smiles through the words to complete the performance. “Are you i... Your wings?” He glances back towards the somehow still escaping plane. The pilot was due his high marks for managing to remain in lopsided, right-engine-flame-engulfed flight. “Do you need me to take you to ground?”

Taking his attention to his HUD for a moment, Sam sorted for an answer. He'd managed to almost completely dislodge the shrapnel from the repulsor and the resting chamber for the wing before even his rescue. A couple of attempts to deploy it would probably do the rest of the work through the motion alone.

In fact, he does just that at the thought, with the expected results.

“I'm good,” answers Sam, using one hand as a base to aim a hit with the other hand, successfully clearing the other remnant metal from the repulsor. “Put me back in, coach,” he looks up as it falls to the rolling landscape below.

Thor nods. Spinning Mjolnir to interrupt their freefall and catch up with their pursuit. At least he takes off at an angle this time. And doesn't attempt to break the sound barrier as Sam knows he can. Still, it's yet again jarring to his “normal man” shoulder, still more as the thunder god flips while still maintaining his grip then releases to propel Sam ahead of him. Had he even heard a word of when he'd started in about dislocated shoulders...?

...Probably not, actually. Not with that look...

He uses his granted momentum, smoothing wings back against his body. When he's close enough he spreads them again, using them to spin and make a grab for the cockpit. Again he misses it, as high-marks pilot darts to a side without losing forward momentum at all.

Sam unfurls, trying to keep pace with Thor who had caught up in a matter of seconds. “Don't know if we can grab the pilot before we just have to down the thing, guys,” he comments on the comms. “I'm not a hummingbird, this guy's darting over on a dime like one with whatever tech's on there.”

“We're pretty much out of time.”

“Telling me, Cap. I can almost see the city from here.”

The crackle of Mjolnir has Sam giving his current wingmate space fast enough to almost falsify his previous statement about his own movement capabilities. He watches from a safe fallback as lightning arcs over the surface of the plane. Quickly blackening parts of metal that hadn't been discolored from the explosion of the last propeller engine.

“Aaand I guess Thor has made the executive decision to fry the ship and _crash_ land it here.”

“We have only an idea of what it contains,” counters the demigod to Stark . “Flight alone could be destructive if they have something dangerous on board.”

“Which is why, I thought, we weren't using lightning...”

“You don't need the things physically to research from the scans Jarvis made,” Bruce intones. The vague beeps of typing keys can be heard in his background.

“Flattery gets you nowhere when you make me watch science die.”

“You'll have your wares to study undamaged, Stark, don't worry.” Thor attaches himself to the hull of the ship, thrusting Mjolnir upward after a moment of spinning to help slow it's forced descent. The bracing he's hooked an elbow over snaps off the second time, so he finds a vent to grip instead.

“For studying _only,_ no recreating.”

“Yeah yeah, Cap.” Tony has caught up to them, and he goes to what's left of the plane's belly to help put it down gently. “I still need to change your mind on that one. Alien tech is out of my league to recreate right now as it were, loathe as I am to admit. Hydra's got a leg up. We just need to knock them down a few.”

“Maybe they left us a flight plan or a manifesto in this one.”

“Stark?”

Tony stomps to aside from where he'd been underneath it once the plane is settled. “No, such, luck,” he answers as Jarvis gives a follow-up tertiary scan to be sure. “Cut their connection to their main hub server before I could get even a crumb to follow on it. And that's after all the remote ones they were running near hundreds of proxies through. Gotta be impressed with their effective use of average hush sometime.”

He boosts to the top of the closed ramp of the bay, scanning the small gap for the hydraulics that controlled the entrance.

“Huh,” Sam comments, as whatever Iron Man does to open the hatch opens the char-fogged cockpit hatch. “ _No_ pilot. ...” He turns his head to a side. “Heads up back in back.”

Practically on cue he hears the pained grunt of an unfamiliar voice. He jumps to the ground from where he's crouched on the edge of the cockpit in time to see the Hydra agent hit the ground.

“Ah,” Steve scolds, tone the same as if reprimanding a small child as he hauls the man up by his belt. Swiftly reaching into his mouth as he unsurprisingly straightens and opens it to speak.

“Hail Hydra?” says Steve, holding up the retrieved cyanide capsule. “You guys still doing that?” He forces the man to turn and cuffs and pats him down, pushing him towards where their own quinjet was landing.

“Be quick deciding on that team, Tony. The sooner this wreckage is hauled out of here the better.”

“Can't move potentially dangerous stuff to the middle of New York for studying. I agree.”

* * *

He's of half a mind to call the demigod to a side the moment they're back at base. But he decides against it. He can practically _see_ Steve's look of concern without even having done it, and all he needed was Thor to feel like he'd just wanted an audience to feel something wrong with him.

So instead he waits for the man--or, Asgardian, however it worked. He waits for him to leave the commons, where they all tend to wind down after missions whenever they ended up at the compound. Sometimes AAR'ing, sometimes said review devolving around one of the others poking enough fun at Steven's and Sam's military tendency and mannerism they fell into that it would derail into enough tangents to be practically forgotten.

It's only around half an hour today. Steve doesn't go into the sometimes spiel as he's effectively distracted by all of the Hydra tech being moved into the laboratory. Probably because Stark refers to them, the highly dangerous and outer-knowledge weapons, as “new toys”... The super soldier follows Stark around, helping move the stuff while giving occasional disapproving looks at the same time. Even Sam can tell the man might for once regret what had been maybe a joke he'd made in passing, as it's earned him one super soldier hovering.

Once that's done Steve is in the commons for only ten minutes before the consternation lurking under his expressions gets to him and he leaves, probably for the lab again. Banner had been cooped up in his own lab for the past couple of days. So that leaves Sam with just the super spies and the big guy.

Conversation dies shortly, and Thor rises and dismisses himself for his quarters. It's easy enough for Sam to stand then too and do the same.

When they are away enough down the hall he calls.

“Thor.”

Thor turns, and Sam nods to a door next to them.

He enters first and he hears the other follow. It's an office, one of the several in the complex. This one is headed by a glass topped mahogany desk, topped by a computer and appropriate desk knick-knacks. The theme in this room seems to be glass, as beyond the desk, there is a matching nook shelf with the same wood type as the desk as bearers to glass shelves. On which stood even more things of various blue shades of small glass sculptures. He often liked to amusedly bring up the various, meticulously decorated offices to Tony. The man claimed to this day they were Pepper's doing. Believable, but Sam wasn't completely convinced, as Avengers stuff was moreso Tony's baby. Not that he was judging.

In front of the desk, there are couches, facing each other in a horseshoe around a coffee table. The setting is slightly more communal rather than one on one, and so he hopes will stave off the other's confrontational reflex.

Sam's quietly thankful that the door is weighted to close on its own too, and Thor doesn't bother to prop it open.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Sam confirms, tone light, turning to face the other as he leaned against the desk. He crosses his arms comfortably. Brown eyes studying blue, which upon noticing, study back.

“Are _you_ though?”

Thor's brow draws. “I'm well.” The sound of the laugh he let's out with it, reserved though it may have been, Sam could almost believe those times the Asgardian had told them he'd been “quite boar-headed in youth.” He could hear the incredulous, “reformed jock fratboy,” chest-beat undertone. Sam makes a mental note to tell him such if the opportunity ever arose in the future. He didn't go out on missions with these guys much. Sure the thought of being an Avenger was appealing in a slightly furtive manner, and sure he got to work with the likes of Captain America and Tony Stark. But after already losing his last partner... Even on days where he could get past that, after years of military, after jumping through hoops to downgrade AFSC's, easing his way into civilian life, to accept maybe that's just what he wanted now, along ran Steve Rogers to nudge his babysteps the other direction.

Still. Babysteps.

“Are you certain you were not hurt?” Thor continues. “You gave your pack to Stark, of course, but... I... Something about your shoulder...?” He demonstrates physically reaching for his own.

“Nah, I'm good. But are you? ...I wasn't talking about physically,” he answers Thor's squint at the repeated question.

“I don't understand.”

Sam adjusts himself, a little more weight onto the desk, crossing his ankles. Thor sits on the couch facing him. “When you caught me--thanks for the save, by the way--you had this look.

“Seemed like maybe it was coming from somewhere deep,” he pushes when Thor doesn't respond.

Expectedly, Thor looks slightly defensive.

“I didn't lose sight of the battle,” he says more casually.

“It's cool if you want to get something off of your chest.” Sam ignores him. Careful not to patronize. Different wording, same old denial of a deeper problem. “Between you and me. A lot of things don't always bring the most pleasant of memories to me either. There's things, we call them “triggers” here when the internet trolls aren't in charge. Triggers for stuff as big as PTSD or small as just a memory.”

Probably without realizing, Thor looks to the floor as he wrings his hands a bit.

“We do...we do not discuss such things back home in Asgard.”

Sam scoffs.

It hadn't been intended as mockery so much as a lack of surprise, but it gets a response. The flare of anger in the demigod's eyes.

Progress.

Though apparently, the hard way.

“Man, you sound like Steve's old ass when people talk about that stuff.” He looks up for a moment. “Which I guess makes sense.” He bites back the addition of 'I thought Asgardians were more advanced though.' He was trying to fan an ember to a flame, not a conflagration...

Thor evens out his expression. Though the way he continues to stake the other with his eyes...

“I do not need, _help,_ or,” Thor makes little motions with a hand in the air, “an ear, whatever it is you're trying to do,” he dismisses.

Sam examines him. Guy had phases he had to get through. This one being an attempt at casual, that came across haughty, and Sam isn't sure whether to be offended or amused, as he's fairly certain he's just been dismissed royally. Like he'd just sought council with royalty sitting on a throne in a palace, instead of a couch in upstate New York. He thinks it was a subconscious, reflexive gesture, but still, all it had been missing was Thor tilting up his chin and deepening his frown into a look of disdain.

“Maybe not.” He pushes up from the desk. “But the thing about help is, it,” he huffs a laugh, “ _helps._ We all need a little push sometimes.

“Because, thing is...” He braves a circle around the seated man and for a second wonders how he got himself handed this; a place among these volatile heroes with so much bottled up that it was sometimes a slight danger to him to even help them find an outlet... “You might be invulnerable. You might know how to handle yourself.

“But the people around you?” He spreads his arms slightly when he's made it around and is facing the demigod again. “Right?” he maintains his light tone. “Am I getting warm?”

Thor is glaring.

“...--You know, your SHIELD tried to get me to do this.”

“Well, I don't know much about SHIELD, aside from paperwork the one time. But, seeing what happened to SHIELD, probably for the best that they didn't eval you.” He sits on the mahogany desk, squinting at the air for a second. “Or anyone else, for that matter. I highly doubt any of the others did it. Tony for sure, he didn't do it. Steve might've, but all he has to to do is turn Captain America on and any glorified paper pusher would give him a pass. Black Widow..,” he scoffs, “is, well. Black Widow.”

Thor is simply watching him silently.

“How many times have you have to standby while others lesser than you had to die?”

Thor is abruptly on his feet. Falcon would be lying if he said he wasn't a little proud he hadn't even flinched.

“I consider no one my lesser.”

“Maybe. But that doesn't change that you can stop a _tank,_ while not everyone else is so lucky. That you're a _prince_. I don't know about you, but politics has made _me_ subject to some stuff that I don't completely agree with. And I'm not even high on the food chain. And I'm just talkin' one realm.”

It wasn't the first time Sam had been charged, and he was sure it wouldn't be the last. But alien superhuman with more than enough meat on his bones to warrant a retreat even if he _wasn't_ superhuman definitely takes the cake. But he still manages not to move, even as Thor roughly grips the wrist on the end of the arm he has propped on the one that had still been cross his chest. Bedamned if he wasn't going to treat himself later, maybe cheat his nightly workout to pass out with some burgers and beer, think about his life choices...

“We are not enemies.”

“I know,” Sam nods.

Thor looks him up and down, saying, “Then why are you doing this?” And Sam feels a little bad, because the other looks so betrayed as he does.

“Because this pain that you're feeling? This, whatever that's going through your head? This...this?” He looks to the grip on his wrist and gestures slightly to emphasize the focus. Or, tries. Damn the grip...

“I'd rather you get it out _now_ ,” he meets the other's eyes, “than in the middle of something.”

Thor's face goes stony. Or maybe tries. Sam almost laughs, but that's probably the nerves talking.

“There is nothing to let out.”

“Come on, guy. Didn't we just cover this?”

Blue eyes have the grace to look away at those words. The other looking a little cowed. Still tries again though.

“I've made my peace with my...dealings.”

Sam can't hold it back at that, the snort. He drops his head forward just so, eyes still on Thor until he turns pointedly to his grip on his wrist when he gets his attention.

Thor releases his grip, stepping back to regrant personal space. His expression has become less defensive, but Sam can still see the struggle there.

“Doesn't mean they can't still get to you. Knowing it's coming don't make it hurt any less. Every time it hits.”

Sam sees his jaw flex, watching as he watches him.

Olive branch, then. He supposed it was only fair.

“You know every time I go up I still can't shake it.” Sam shrugged a bit. “The thrill's still there, sure, but it's like background noise at this point. Sometimes I'm up there, mission's going great, and I feel that again. Other times... You know, I just feel like a sitting duck. Ripe for plucking out of the sky.

“But either way I do it. Because I know people down there are counting on me. People there, need my help. Or could _use_ it, need it or not.” He shrugs again. “You do what you can, Even though sometimes it doesn't feel like enough. Even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it ever will be.”

“Like you're failing more people, more times, than you'd thought possible.” Sam looks up at the other's voice. Troubled eyes are staring distantly at the patterned carpet atop which the desk rests. “As if for all your supposed might,” Thor continues, “your foresight doesn't seem to share in the power. And it took you so long, centuries, to realize your conceited blindness, you wonder of your own wits as well.”

Thor's turn to give a snort of an unamused laugh. He looks up, expression cautious. Careful, as if expecting Sam to pull the rhetorical rug from under his feet at any moment.

Sam just crosses his arms and leans back, giving him his full attention.

Hesitantly, Thor speaks again. “...I once was made to watch an entire village perish. Not because I could do nothing, but because if I had, so many more would have died. That's what my father told me.

"And that was on Asgard. Where things, and people, are stronger. That is to say, more sturdy, in terms of matter. Here at times, I feel like an oversized oaf, bumbling about trying to find footing yet destroying things without intent in my wake as I go.”

Sam watches him wring his hands again. “My father. He is...” Blue eyes go up to him again, this time guarded, analytical. “...my father is a good leader. And he means well. But he can...sometimes be...”

“Brash?” Sam wants to suggest. But he doesn't. Because he can practically hear the hypothetical door slam it would bring.

“Prideful. To the extent of hubris, I believe you humans still call it.

“It makes him willing to display might at risk of pyrrhic victory. Or just being overcome. Unwilling to back down and try another tactic. As if only a coward takes any way other than force.” The demigod deflates some, looking to a side.

“That's a hell of a way to do politics,” says Sam, brow drawn. Thor simply scoffs, not giving him the rebuttal he was partially expecting.

“And to think, I believe I used to be the same... It didn't matter if anyone got hurt whilst I was battling. They wouldn't get hurt, because I was boar-headed enough to believe I could and would save them all. And the ones who were hurt? It was their folly somehow. Hadn't they seen the battle, why didn't they run...”

Thor seems to realize he's still speaking on a train of thought, as Sam sees his eyes focus a moment before he looks up towards him again. Sam just remains silent, openly attentive.

“Forgive me,” Thor dips his head for a moment. “I shouldn't speak of my own... Of, the...These things, in such a manner.”

When Sam just remains attentive and quiet in response, he continues with a breath of a laugh, “You can't possibly enjoy hearing such laments all day,” he says with a hint of disbelief.

“Call them what you will, they're therapeutic. It's healthy to let that stuff out.”

Thor's brow draws slightly, over the shadow of distance that is becoming of his face again.

“And 'enjoy' isn't the right word. Or is. I _enjoy_ helping people get to their own closure. Their own peace of mind. No one likes a story that seems like it'll never end, especially when it sucks. Much less end happily. Or at least _I_ don't like that kind of artsy dark shit. Give me rainbows and sunshine any day.” Sam seats himself fully on the desk, holding up a hand. “Unless that story is about people you're fighting.” He's earned a few small laughs, and Sam chuckles too. He tucks his ankle under the thigh of the opposite leg. “And even if it's not, who can argue that the peace of mind that even bad closure brings is worse than no closure?”

It's quiet for a few moments, and Sam let's it be.

“Seriously, man, whatever you need to get off your chest. I'm here to listen.” He gestures back to the couch.

He still hesitates for a moment. Contemplating towards the offered seat.

But Thor sits.

**Author's Note:**

> Kinda want to do a “Thor interactions with each Avenger” story now 'cause I have a few ideas now. We'll see if I can grow them enough to be worthy of a write. I doubt it will be chapters on this story though, probably separate. We'll see. And give me more MCU Sam meta, Marvel, ffs...  
> Meantime, if you want tell me your favorite ship names here or on tumblr. 'Cause while I love them, we don't really see them much less really go looking for them here on the gen-ships. We just kind of see them float by off the port bow or through the binoculars and point. ThunderBird and BirdOnAWire (even though I just made that one up if it wasn't already a thing) might be my new favorites, I like ScarlettVision and StarBucks too.
> 
> Yes hi hello I am back in business.  
> Update to Cursed at the end of the month. Promise, cross my heart and all that this time.


End file.
